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Reader's View: Sickening to refer to hunting as a 'harvest'

In common with most people in the UK, I cannot understand the enthusiasm with which some Americans embrace the practice of killing animals for pleasure. I find the casual destruction of beautiful and intelligent mammals quite sickening.

The description in the News Tribune of the haul of thousands of bodies in the bear-killing season as a "harvest," while hypocritical, may point to the reasoning ("Field Reports: Wisconsin bear harvest down 11 percent," Nov. 4). If a sentient creature can be regarded as comparable to a vegetable crop, rather than as a conscious life, it may be easier to kill.

Of course, in times gone by, the same sort of language was used to describe and justify enslaving and killing people.